Her Forbidden Bodyguard (Dangerous Devotion #5)

Chapter 1 Diamond

Diamond

The helicopter banks left and suddenly there it is: my prison for the foreseeable future.

Big Sur. Cliffs dropping straight into churning gray water. A house that's all glass and sharp angles, perched on the edge of the world like it's daring the ocean to swallow it whole.

I haven't been here in years. The last time, I was sixteen and my father was pretending we were still a family.

A "bonding weekend" that lasted exactly thirty-six hours before he got a call and helicoptered back to the city.

I spent the rest of the trip alone with the housekeeper, reading romance novels I'd smuggled in my luggage and pretending the empty rooms didn't echo.

Now I'm twenty-three, and Daddy's shipping me back here like defective merchandise.

Full circle.

"We're descending, Miss Sterling." The pilot's voice crackles through my headset.

I don't respond. I've perfected the art of not responding over the past six hours—private car to private jet to private helicopter, all of it arranged by Daddy's people without a single word of input from me.

Like I'm cargo. Expensive, troublesome cargo that needs to be stored somewhere remote until the PR crisis blows over.

The helicopter touches down and I yank off my headset before the rotors stop spinning, already reaching for my phone.

No signal.

Of course. I forgot about that—how this place is a beautiful void, cut off from everything. Last time that felt peaceful. Now it feels like a trap.

"Your bags will be brought up, Miss Sterling. Mr. Vega is waiting inside."

Mr. Vega. My babysitter. My warden. Some security contractor my father hired because apparently the death threats in my DMs have gotten "credible." Whatever that means. I've been getting hate since I was fifteen years old—you'd think I'd be used to it by now.

I push open the helicopter door before the pilot can help me, the wind whipping my hair across my face.

February in Big Sur is mild and rainy, a far cry from the February I was supposed to be having in Cabo with three of my closest acquaintances and a photographer.

Instead I'm here, at the edge of nowhere, because some basement-dwelling psycho with too much time decided I needed to die for the crime of being rich on the internet.

The front door is already open.

And there he is.

I stop walking. Just for a second. Just long enough to take in six-plus feet of tattooed muscle in a black t-shirt, dark hair cropped close, and a face that looks like it's never smiled in its entire existence.

Tattoos crawling up his neck. Hands that look like they've done things I don't want to think about.

He looks like the kind of man mothers warn their daughters about.

He looks at me like I'm a problem to be managed.

"Miss Sterling." His voice is lower than I expected. Rougher. "I'm Cesar Vega. Your father hired me."

"I know why you're here." I walk past him without slowing down, heading straight for the east wing.

I know this house better than anyone. I know that the third stair creaks, know that the master suite gets the best light in the morning, know that the kitchen has a wine fridge my father doesn't realize I discovered at at sixteen.

Footsteps behind me. Close. I didn't hear him following.

"We need to discuss the security protocols," he says.

"We really don't."

"You stay on the property." He's not asking. "No social media—no posting, no stories, nothing that could give away your location. No visitors. No leaving the house without telling me first."

I stop at my bedroom door and turn to face him. He's close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. They're so dark they're almost black, and there's absolutely nothing in them. No warmth. No reaction to the fact that I'm giving him my best rich-bitch glare.

Most men melt under that glare. This one seems completely immune.

"Those aren't requests," he adds.

"And if I say no?"

"Then my job gets harder. I don't like when my job gets hard."

"That sounds like a you problem."

"It'll be an everyone problem if you don't follow the rules." He nods toward my door. "I'm in the room next to yours. Adjoining door. Lock's on my side."

I make a face. "There's no adjoining door."

"There is now. Your father had modifications made before you arrived." He says it like he's discussing the weather. "If someone gets into this house, I need immediate access to you."

"So you can just... walk into my room whenever you want?"

"If there's a threat, yes."

"And if there's not a threat? If I'm sleeping, or changing, or?"

"Then I'll be on my side of the door, Miss Sterling. Doing my job."

I stare at him. He stares back. The silence stretches until it's almost unbearable, but he doesn't fidget, doesn't blink, doesn't do any of the things normal people do when a conversation gets uncomfortable.

He just waits.

"I want a different bodyguard," I say.

"No."

"You don't get to tell me no. I'll call my father!"

"Your father is the one who hired me." Still no inflection. Still no reaction. "He was very specific. You stay here. You follow the rules. I keep you alive. That's the arrangement."

"I didn't agree to any arrangement."

"You didn't have to."

The fury rises so fast I almost choke on it.

I'm twenty-three years old. I have my own money, my own life, my own apartment in the city that I chose and decorated and paid for with brand deals my father thinks are beneath me.

And now I'm being shipped off to a house I hate, babysat by a man who looks at me like I'm nothing, all because some psycho on the internet can't handle rejection.

"Go to hell," I say sweetly.

"I've slept in worse places," he deadpans.

He turns and walks away. Some petty part of me can't let him have the last word.

"I'm going to make your life hell," I call after him. "You know that, right? I'm going to be the worst assignment you've ever had."

He pauses. When he looks back at me, there's a hint of amusement in his expression.

"I spent eight years in prison, Miss Sterling. You're not even close to the worst thing I've had to survive."

And then he's gone, disappearing around the corner without another glance.

I stand there for a long moment, heart pounding, mind spinning.

Eight years in prison.

My father hired an ex-con to protect me. A man with tattoos up his neck and scars on his face and hands that look like they've done terrible things. A man who looks at me like I'm nothing—not pretty, not rich, not special, just a job.

***

The master suite looks exactly like it did seven years ago.

Same view. Same bed. Same hollow feeling, like the room is too big and I'm too small to fill it.

But there's a new door in the wall. I try the handle—locked. From the other side.

He's in there. Right now. Three feet away, separated by a door I can't open but he can.

I pace the room while my bags are delivered, then pace some more after the staff disappears. My phone connects to wifi and I'm immediately flooded with notifications. Comments. DMs. The usual mix of worship and vitriol that comes with two million followers and no filter.

I check my DMs on autopilot and immediately wish I hadn't.

you think you can hide bitch

I know where you are

daddy's money won't save you

you're going to die screaming

My thumb hovers over the screen. I should screenshot these. Show them to Cesar. This is probably exactly the kind of thing he's supposed to know about.

But then he'd know I looked. He'd know I couldn't stay away from my phone for even one night. He'd give me that flat, unimpressed stare that makes me feel like a child caught misbehaving.

I delete the app instead. Let the messages disappear into the void where they belong.

The sun sets blood-red over the Pacific and I shower off the travel, then crawl into bed in my silk pajamas, staring at the ceiling while the ocean roars outside.

Everyone wants something from me. My whole life, people have wanted pieces—my money, my connections, my followers, my face in their photos. I've learned to read the hunger in people's eyes, to calculate what they're after before they even open their mouths.

But Cesar Vega looked at me like he didn't want anything.

Not my money. Not my name. Not my body, even though I caught the quick flicker of his gaze down my frame, like he was assessing a perimeter rather than a woman.

He doesn't want to impress me. Doesn't want to fuck me. Doesn't want my approval or my attention or anything I have to offer.

He just... doesn't care.

Everyone wants something.

So why doesn't he?

I lie awake for hours, the question turning over in my mind like a stone I can't stop touching. On the other side of the wall, I hear nothing. No footsteps. No TV. No signs of life at all.

Maybe he's asleep.

Or maybe he's just better at silence than anyone I've ever met.

Either way, I'm the one lying awake at 2 AM, thinking about a man who looks at me like I'm nothing.

And wondering why that bothers me more than all the death threats combined.